The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus in which a plurality of font patterns indicating characters and graphic signs are stored in a storage memory, and an image relating to facsimile apparatus operation is printed on paper or displayed on a display part, so that the printed or displayed image comprises data represented by a font pattern data read from the storage memory.
In a conventional facsimile system, a CCD (charge coupled device) reader optically reads an image by raster scanning of a document so as to produce an image signal indicating the optical density of the document image. The image signal read by the CCD reader is converted by an A/D (analog-to-digital) converter into a digital image signal. Such digital image signals produced in this manner are subjected to several image processing processes including a shading correction process and an MTF (modulation transfer function) correction process, so that processed image data is produced. The processed image data is compressed by an encoding part to produce coded image data relating to the document image. This coded image data is modulated and transmitted by a communication part to a receiving facsimile station via a public transmission line.
There has been proposed an improved facsimile system which can transmit an image comprising facsimile sender data identifying a sender of the facsimile system. When image data is transmitted from the proposed facsimile system to a receiving facsimile station via a public transmission line, the facsimile sender data is added to the image data prior to the transmission. Thus, an operator at the receiving facsimile station can recognize who has transmitted the image by seeing the facsimile sender data when the image data is received. In addition, in the proposed facsimile system, a message relating to facsimile system operation can be displayed on a display part in order to assist the operator at the facsimile system, and a transmitting/receiving report relating to operational records of the facsimile system can be printed by a printing part.
However, in the proposed facsimile system described above, it is impossible to newly register a desired font pattern different from any of fixed font patterns which were installed in a ROM (read only memory) of the facsimile system at the time of the manufacture. Thus, when an image is received from or transmitted to the facsimile system and the facsimile sender data is represented by a font pattern different from any of the previously installed font patterns of a receiving facsimile station, the above described sender data transmitting function is not effective. For example, when an image comprising a facsimile sender data represented by a Japanese character font pattern is transmitted from a transmitting facsimile station in Japan to a receiving facsimile station in the United States of America, the facsimile sender data cannot be correctly reproduced by the receiving facsimile station since the previously installed font patterns thereof are only English character font patterns.
In addition, in the proposed facsimile system, it is difficult to display or print an image comprising characters or graphic signs represented by font patterns different from the previously installed font patterns of the ROM.
In order to eliminate the above described problems, it is desirable to provide a facsimile apparatus capable of storing a new font pattern in a storage memory, so that an image comprising data represented by font pattern data read from the storage memory can correctly be printed or displayed even when the data relates to font patterns different from the previously installed font patterns of the ROM.